Missing Numbers
by Happernang
Summary: The curious subject of Missingno. and his being.


You see we never questioned much here. It was odd, really, with different shades seeming to come upon us at different places. Here at Cinnabar it was a plentiful hue of red, like in the afternoon but before and after and before that. So when I perched at the beach there wasn't even an inkling of connotation towards the _use_ of beer or alcoholic products, simply, as people we were happy. We turned giddy at giddy moments, without much of the artificial justifications. Bitterness was angst and angst was one of the few serious, to reuse a word, connotations. It is said that our people never had to worry about things like water shortages, well, we've all got obvious answers to that. Open a Squirtle's mouth and you've water a plenty, pure. If it runs out of power a few gallons later you can give it a spray, or a moments rest. Live simply. Really, at the beach I had such an innocent bout of laughter, not so much as a translucent pill about me. I pointed over at a robust woman and the old Figura would do his thing, and I'd laugh. He'd stand with his dot-and-lines face in a big red hat and a one-piece, and it was all fun and games. Seen as a gross offence to many still, like you couldn't do a thing worse. This is coming from the most rabblerousing spirit in Kanto.

But I let Figura do that, and we all had fun. It was a Soda Pop, nothing like beer. I took sips of the stuff now warm and flat and all and I like it, in a childish kind of high. Figura shapes into a blandish Seel all smiling and he claps wildly at moms with babies and he scares some small children. His Seel call still kind of sounds like him. It made it more frightening. I pointed at him being a fool for me and I laughed hard in blissful ignorance, a lumpling grown up. And Seel is looking far into the sea while this is all happening, now that he's breaking from the routine. He hears me calling again and again "Change into something else, change…"

And so he changes.

The Seel begins in a great lump, but then his shape came to be different to anything he's shown me before. He moves in a straight line, horizontally, and he begins to rise in a rigid and vertical way, up so high that everyone on the beach turns. Not only because he's getting so tall. There's an audible buzzing that gets louder as he does it. It just kept growing, the sound and the figure.

Figura stopped then and he was what had looked to be a big circuit board, or a junked-up skyscraper. I stood up to inspect him. I inched my hand near the surface but I could feel static in the air around it, and I retracted. The thing was perfectly flat, more than paper. The people all around were amazed at how it turned invisible when you looked at it a certain way. I stayed there is some form of shocked amusement for a while, and I said to Figura, "Where'd you see something like this, Figura? What is it?" And so he turns abruptly in the sand, now at a diagonal angle to the sea. I look into the distance, everyone does, and there's a small twinkle out in the fog of the afternoon. Seafoam Island is quite a few degrees away from that direction. So I say to Figura, "Stop that, now. Let's see what you're on about." And he changes into a Seel again, and we set off in the water. I hold him by his rudders and he whisks off in that direction.

The water got to me at that time of day. It wasn't Hoenn, but there were things that could get you still. If it wasn't a mad Gyarados it was a Seaking that charged from beneath you. Even surviving that, I doubt I'd like to fight something on the back of my own weapon. I huddled close to Figura and he moved quickly. Still I saw that glinting, growing.

"Stop for now, Figura." I scratched at the bit of foamed beard I had and saw not more than thirty feet away an angular shape. Great silverish lines glinted in their own way all over it. I thought for a second and I grabbed ahold of my aviators. "Figura, let's go down for a second." and so he went under with me.

I hated my eyes under the salty water, and though nigh was visible I could tell there was no long column below the water. We came back up and with me sputtering and wiping my accessories, I worked at my eyes so that they could function proper. The thing seemed to be floating. We swam to it, but we circled round.

For a moment of us swimming by it went out of existence, like that, only to cut back into the air once again. When we came behind it I saw the same odd-L shape that Figura showed me. We made the unanimous decision to near it. When only we were inches from it that same buzz drilled at my ears and pounded my temples in some rhythm unnamed. Figura shaped into a fatter form and I stood up on him.

I righted on my aviators and I got all the blonde hair out of their way, and I studied incredulously. This time my wet hand neared it with an outstretched finger, bony and bone-white in comparison. I flexed the joints back with every nearing. I heard mixed tickings and mechanical coos from the other side of it. Finally, I reached in definite form.

The second I had made contact to the thing I felt that I was lifted by the power of static itself, I had flown back in what seemed like a painful instance of slowed-time. Flashing frames of different realities and eyes and Unknown symbols and blinking text in caps on a screen played before me instead of sight. But in that instant I was numb and rocketing the other direction, and I met with cold but familiar water. Then immediately I began to drown. With no chance at buoyancy I sank and myself half conscious I could only jerk and kick in some primitive act of disapproval. I felt after a long tossing in the now tight and constricting waves the body of a Dewgong lift me into an air I could breathe, and with life back within myself the images of dull space flashed in a more malevolent fervor.

Now auditory hallucinations beat at my skull and I saw text flash on blank screens in my mind with voices yelling and singing in distorted tones GOTTA CATCH 'EM ALL and the text CATCH in yellow and blue font and all of this ringing and banging in my head and finally I grasped myself by the jaw and ears and forced open my eyes, screaming out water gun ice beam surf super effective…

And the sound of water twirling and shooting out became audible, and a moment later the sound of water exploding off of a hard, vibrating surface. I held tight onto what must have been Figura and pulled myself to the direction of the action.

My eyes were now jittering in their own reality, screens tore blissfully and some seconds lagged. The shape was still there. With every blink of an eye CATCH flew up and startled me again. I reigned hard on my wits and tried to get myself by some degree posed for a fight. My twiggish limbs did the same as my perceptions otherwise. I took a single empty great ball from my belt and threw it about seven feet, into the water. And it bobbed there.

I fell onto Figura in some mangled, incomprehensible defeat. Water lapped at my face as I breathed hard, and some came in to choke me. But I heard the sound of a Poke Ball opening for a capture, and the sound of itself retracting. There was the clip of it closing. I fluttered my sore eyes opened to see the shape no longer visible, and a shaking great ball floating a few feet from me. "Figura," I coughed out, and in a weak flail Figura captured the thing in it's mouth. I held on by every means I had, and slowly we moved in the waters. Suddenly it seemed all the more dark.


End file.
